


Venus as a Boy

by starl1ng



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Fix-It, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, Romance, Sick Character, Sickfic, Slow Build, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:13:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29445351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starl1ng/pseuds/starl1ng
Summary: I believe Francis could have saved Henry and Henry could have saved Francis. Henry is prone to long silences: Francis is happy to fill them. Unbridled tenderness, unchecked amount of literature references. Lots of vulnerability. I know it's an unusual pairing but hear me out! I don't think it belongs in the canon but it's an interesting possibility to explore.huge credit to the fic 'always running with these legs going nowhere.', for doing this sort of idea first, although I only discovered it halfway through writing this. it's really good, check it out!
Relationships: Francis Abernathy/Henry Winter
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> thank u sm to karen for proofreading every new chapter every night and for convincing me that this is a good use of my time. comments hugely appreciated if you are inclined to give them- criticism and errors pointed out warmly welcomed.  
> im @yearningpoetry on insta if you wanna chat.  
> also, in case this is still a thing we have to say: i dont own any of these characters or this universe, they belong to the godlike donna tartt
> 
> please excuse the horrifying mix of british and american english used throughout, i did my best but i cant make myself care abt the USA that much
> 
> not necessarily canon compliant or non canon compliant- i kept it vague on that front so you can interpret when and how this happens in the story. not compliant with the ending of tsh though.
> 
> on w the fic!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> fic title is taken from a bjork song which i rediscovered lately just after finishing this fic after hearing it on the radio and remembering it from a mixtape my mum kept in her car when i was little. The tune, title, vibes, and quite a lot of the lyrics turned out to be weirdly relevant to this fic. I'm not a huge bjork fan but this song is so summery and lovely.

Francis was drinking jasmine tea. He had, several times in the past, expressed a distaste for green teas (claiming they tasted like grass), but somehow the faintly oriental bitterness called up a certain, vaguely Confucian, peace to him. White petals growing somewhere warm and austere, moist flowers crushed to scent in the bottom of a bag heady with scent, trailing aphrodisiac fumes. Henry had reminded him that jasmine used to be associated with Aphrodite the first time he smelled it brewing. Francis smiled quietly as he remembered how Henry had immediately crushed this metaphor by refusing a cup and instead made himself a coffee. And yet- every time Francis drank it he could see Henry inhaling the scent out of the corner of his eye. Francis often thought that it wouldn’t surprise him if Henry had a secret shrine to Aphrodite. It wasn’t, by any means, a suspicion that Henry was interested in romance, but rather the memory of the look in Henry’s eyes as Julian had concluded that ‘ _beauty is terror’_ \- if there was anything Henry could respect, it was terror. He remembered Henry stumbling over Tennyson’s _Tithonus_ while drunk, the way he recited with relish: _‘I wither slowly in thine arms, here at the quiet limit of the world’._ That was the night Henry had broken his teacup just by holding it too hard, much to Camilla’s dismay. Francis, just for a second, had felt a wild urge to follow suit and smash his on the arm of his chair.

Looking through his steamed up (and entirely superfluous) glasses at Henry as he read, he seemed almost birdlike. A hulking peregrine falcon- rumpled white chest, grey jacket, beaked face. Empty eyes, though perhaps that was only Francis feeling sorry for himself. Powerful shoulders. An intensity in the way he looked at things: stern, even in the smeary blurred landscape the steam had created. This intensity, Francis discovered upon taking off the costume spectacles, was now directed at him, taking him quite by unawares.

“I don’t know why you insist on wearing those ridiculous things,” he said curtly. Francis knew that it was highly likely that Henry found him ridiculous in his entirety- his penchant for colourful neckties, his affection for the Victorian in general, his serial consumption of French poetry. While he was just as good a student as any of the rest of the group, Francis lacked some of the ascetic monochromacy of what might be perceived as a ‘serious student’ and had little of the ability to lose himself to literature, forgetting completely about his body’s needs, like Henry did. He was prone to snacking constantly while working, and his endless doctor’s appointments were legend in the Greek class. Bunny, around a month after the Battenkill incident, had drunkenly (and rather weakly, Francis thought) joked that Francis put the ‘deer’ in ‘hypochondria’; Charles had hastily changed the subject to the upcoming Italy trip, prompting Henry to begin to massage his temples in an uncharacteristic lack of subtlety. _‘It wouldn’t have been so bad,’_ he had said tiredly later, _‘if the joke had made any sense whatsoever.’_ Francis had privately just been glad that Bunny hadn’t yet realised the potential in the rhyme of ‘queer’ and ‘deer’, though he felt it was probably only a matter of time.

He looked back at Henry.

“Never heard of the placebo effect?” he shot back, cringing inwardly at the lameness of his excuse.

“I know of it well enough to know that that isn’t the reason you wear them. Your sight is good, anyway.”

Francis sighed and put the offending glasses on the table next to his chair.

“What’s it to you, anyway?’ he asked. It was unusual for Henry to break his focus like this- he was able to read for marathon periods of time, never looking up except to take a sip of water. When Bunny had asked how he did it, affably but rather energetically slapping him on the shoulder, he had coolly replied that ‘it helps to be interested in the text.’

Then again, he hadn’t broken his focus this time. Rather, he was now focusing on Francis. The electric light glinted on Henry’s glasses’ lenses. Francis mercilessly supressed a shiver that threatened to run down his spine. Henry cocked his head minutely, causing his glasses to go opaque in the light, so that Francis could no longer see his blue eyes. A little twitch of his eyebrows was the only thing to tell of the answer being measured up, but all he said was:

‘Nothing.’

Francis slumped back in his chair. He should have known better than to look for any answer in those eyes. He turned back to the tea, holding the mug to his face for warmth.

“You’re not getting a headache, I hope?” asked Henry, who had to Francis’s surprise, not yet gone back to his book. Francis, rather bewildered by Henry’s apparent concern, watched him dig around in his jacket pocket, eventually pulling out a small pillbox and offering it to him.

“Oh, no thanks. I’m fine, really” he replied, hoping a blush wouldn’t further Henry’s suspicions. Perhaps, come to think of it, he _was_ a little ridiculous. He ran a hand through his hair, smiling sardonically when a few hairs came away in his hand and holding them up for Henry to see.

“My mom told me my father was almost totally bald by forty.”

Upon realising what he had said, he immediately lost the battle with the blush. Silly, frivolous comments like that and the inevitable snippy response were the reason he usually didn’t talk much around Henry when he was reading. And yet, to his surprise, Henry only said:

“The drummer? That’s too bad- I like your hair. Kind of reminds me of that painting of Helen of Troy- you know the one?”

Francis could do nothing in the wake of such a comment but run his hand through his hair again. Henry knew full well that he worshipped Helen- he had talked about her in Julian’s class before: _‘I don’t see how she did anything more wrong than Agamemnon or Priam. She knew she had power, so she used it.’_ He had a few little portraits of her surreptitiously cut from library books on his mirror. She reminded him of how meaningless and powerful beauty was, in her vastly different hair colours, dresses and face shapes. He would look in the mirror past her scornful eyes and remind himself that anyone could be the peak of beauty if the right person looked at them. He was fully aware of how pathetic and desperate it sounded and was mildly nauseated by himself. Still, there was something about the way Henry looked at him-

“Helen’s a first, I was always told I looked like Anne of Green Gables,” said Francis after a few seconds, laughing. To his surprise, Henry laughed too. The corners of Francis’s insides glowed.

Later, once Henry had left, he would write in his little journal another quote from _Tithonus_ :

‘a man—

So glorious in his beauty and thy choice,

Who madest him thy chosen, that he seem'd

To his great heart none other than a God!

I ask'd thee, 'Give me immortality.'

Then didst thou grant mine asking with a smile,

Like wealthy men, who care not how they give.’

He smiled a pyrrhic little smile, once again fully aware of how ridiculous he was.


	2. Chapter Two

Francis was climbing the stairs to Henry’s place. He clutched a box of chocolates which Camilla had given to him as a thank you for his rather instrumental (and quite brilliantly played, he thought) role in getting Richard to ask her out for a date while still letting him believe that the whole thing was completely his own idea. It had come off without a hitch, and as far as Francis could see the only thing that now stood in the way of the two was Richard’s self-conscious bumbling. Francis happened to know that Henry was very fond of chocolate, though he tried to hide this incongruous sweet tooth from the others. Francis and Henry had beaten Richard and Camilla at euchre the day before, and Francis had a pack of cards in his pocket.

When Henry opened the door he looked rumpled and barely looked Francis in the eye. Before he could say anything, Henry had seen the chocolates and taken the box.

“Ah, Francis. Something to get my blood sugar up- you don’t mind?”

Francis nodded quickly.

“I have a headache looming and I, fool that I am, am trying every trick to stave it off. I don’t know why I bother- “he said, around a mouthful of what looked like a strawberry cream, “-I try this every time and it never works. Ah, raspberry,” he said, brow creasing in mild disgust.

“Never been my favourite” said Francis, finally recovering his powers of speech.

“No. No, mine neither, but my vision is a touch shimmery and I can’t read the label.”

“Henry- “

“Francis. Don’t look so sympathetic. I’m not an invalid, or not yet at least. Ugh, orange cream. I seem to have very little luck today.”

A small, idiotic corner of Francis’s head conjured up Forrest Gump: _‘life is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you’re going to get.’_ He banished Tom Hanks from his mind and snatched up the card from the box.

“What would you prefer then? Hazelnut sound good?”

Henry shook his head.

“We can both see this isn’t working. Listen, I really need to lay down. Would you mind coming back in a few days?” he said, reaching for a glass of water and knocking it off the counter, where it broke into three crystalline shards, and stared at it confusedly. It had been a tacky pint glass with a bald eagle emblazoned on a lurid star-spangled banner, underscored by the inevitable ‘freedom’. Francis wondered vaguely where Henry had picked up such a garish thing.

“An omen,” said Henry, looking down at the floor as Francis reached down to pick them up from besides Henry’s socked foot before Henry could cause any more problems. When Francis looked up, he was looking increasingly unfocused.

“An eagle to my right,” he said.

“What?”

“An eagle to my right- a good omen. The Iliad- Priam. You know?” He said vaguely.

“Well, it’s not looking particularly good, is it Henry?”

“I _said_ you can leave.”

“And yet I’m not going to,” he said firmly. Henry glared at him in a resigned sort of way, rather like a cat.

“Fine. It’s beginning to set in anyway- I won’t be able to so much as argue with you, let alone kick you out, soon enough. Just- not too much noise, please.” With that, he rubbed his eyes, sighed, and went through a doorway into his bedroom. Francis listened to the thud of one shoe being kicked off, then the other, then the creak of bedsprings.

Having heard the grisly details of Henry’s headaches from Bunny in the past, Francis had a vague idea of what to do. He found Henry’s ice tray and refilled it, putting it back in the freezer when he was finished, smiling fondly at the pint of ice cream he found there ( _‘made with milk from_ happy _cows!’)_. He then drew all the curtains in the kitchen and living room, should Henry want to venture out of his room. Then, at a loss, he curled up on an armchair with the a few of the remaining chocolates (self-consciously leaving some of the best ones for his new patient) and began to play solitaire. Later, he would find himself feeling bemusedly fluttered when he found a new and unopened box of jasmine tea in Henry’s cupboard.

He sat back down, tucking his legs up under him, and mused over some of Henry’s Greek work that was spread on a table. The somehow dear curves and strokes of his handwriting felt like some kind of forbidden intimacy, the gracefully angular swooping of his Greek and the boxy brusqueness of his English annotations. He thought- _I could recognise that handwriting anywhere. A signature on a bank cheque in New York, a correction on a menu in Paris, a sign in a shop window in Athens._ The thrill of the universality of one soul recognising another was not a new one to Francis, but not a familiar friend either. He had felt it once before- but that was irrelevant to the situation at hand. He checked a few sentences of Henry’s work for errors, before giving in to the fact that this was entirely pointless.

Around three hours later, when Francis was about thirty pages deep in an ancient looking copy of Marlowe’s Edward II, Henry weakly called his name. His voice was curiously brittle, and deeper than usual. His usually crisp ‘s’ sounds were slurred as he called.

“Water- please,” he said, when Francis arrived in his room. He didn’t open his eyes. He had red marks on his face from his glasses’ arms, and he startled a little when Francis walked over and gently took them off, placing them on his bedside table. He placed a hand, rather unnecessarily, on Henry’s flushed forehead, shaking his head a little at the heat and moisture he found there.

“Your hands are nice and cool,” Henry said quietly, still not opening his eyes but furrowing his brows a little. Francis silently put both hands on Henry’s cheeks, working up the courage to stroke with one thumb after a few seconds. He stayed like this until his hands began to get warm, and then went to get the water Henry had asked for. When he brought it through, Henry, with his eyes still closed, took two pills from his pill case on his bedside table, and lay back in silence. Francis watched his chest rise and fall a little too quickly for half a minute or so, and then left and went back to the Marlowe which he had left propped open on the arm of his chair. He tried to read one line five times, and then gave up and buried his blushing face in his hands, thanking his lucky stars Henry couldn’t see him. After that he felt a little better and read another ten pages of the play before realising the evening was beginning to draw in. Only pretending to hesitate, he decided to go home and pack a bag for a few days. Logically he knew that Henry had handled these headaches many times alone, and yet Francis’s foolishly soft heart quailed at the very idea of leaving him to do so.

He had just opened the front door to leave when he heard Henry’s thin voice calling his name again, causing him to turn and walk quickly back towards his room. By the time he got there, Henry was already unconscious again, but he woke upon Francis patting his shoulder to find out what he wanted. Henry, gasping for breath a little, looked up through watery eyes.

“Were you leaving?”

Francis was suddenly embarrassed by his presumptive imposition.

“Well, I was going to come back, but if you want me to go- “

“Stay, will you?” he said, “please.”

“Well sure Henry, but I need to get some things- my Greek books, some clothes- “

“Use mine” Henry said immediately, “I don’t mind. Just- I have a tendency to do rather ridiculous things to myself when I’m in a state like this. Might be better to have someone around.”

“Well, of course I will then.”

“Good man. If it has to be anyone, I’m glad it’s you.”

His eyes were bloodshot and his pupils were blown wide in the dark. His dark hair was sweaty and tousled, and his sheets were twisted and coming off the bed in one corner. Francis, unable to refuse him a thing, nodded, smoothed the blankets a little, pulled the sheet back over the exposed mattress, and took Henry’s half empty ( _or half full?_ intoned his mind glibly) glass to refill. In the kitchen he splashed his face to shake off the oppressive stuffiness of the bedroom and the rush of Henry’s previously unheard-of vulnerability.

When he got back, Henry’s eyes were rather unfocused and his breathing was a little more ragged.

“God, Henry, you’re a state,” he said. Henry’s eyes flickered vaguely in the direction of his face, but he did nothing but groan and put his arm over his eyes. Francis cracked the window open an inch or so behind the blinds and left. He thought he could hear Henry keen ever so slightly behind him, but he didn’t turn around.

Rather than make noise poking around in Henry’s room, he dug around in the laundry hamper for something to wear to bed, feeling only mildly guilty. He settled on a creased white shirt which he wouldn’t feel too bad for sleeping in, and retreated to the spare room with the fold-out bed to change. He felt like the heroine of a trashy romance novel when he, disgusted by himself, lifted the cuff to his face to inhale the smell of lucky strikes cigarettes and a sweet, bookish sweat, as opposed to the acrid sharp sweat of the perennially nervous. It wasn’t a particularly romantic smell, but as the novels would say, it was _him_. When you love someone, you love all of them. It was something Francis had learned before.

Two loud thuds sounded in the kitchen: one sharply wooden, and the other softer and more cushioned.

He found Henry on the floor, clutching his head and looking for all the world like a child that had tripped and was trying to decide whether to cry or not. Francis was struck anew by the power of these headaches to strip back every layer of Henry’s self to leave him vulnerable and wispish.

“Francis, my head- “

“Jesus Christ, Henry, let me have a look,” he said, covering the space between them in a few paces. Gripping Henry’s wrist firmly, he guided the hand away from the sweaty forehead. It was hard to assess the damage, especially when he was trying not to get blood on the pristinely white shirt he had borrowed. Henry, confused, was looking around.

“Francis, your legs- “

“My what?”

“Your legs.”

“What about them?” he asked, trying to resist the temptation to tuck them under himself. Henry fell silent at the question, looking puzzled. Sighing, Francis went to find a clean cloth to wipe Henry’s head with. When he got back, Henry was laying completely on the floor. He seemed to be a little more present, and suffering for it. He was holding his head again, forcing Francis to move his hand way once again. Henry looked stupidly at the sudden richness in his pale, creased palm.

“Jesus Christ, what happened to me?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“You- You’re wearing my shirt.” He seemed to be fighting the confusion that had gripped him just a few moments before. The cut seemed to be bleeding even more.

“Henry, are you sure you shouldn’t be seen by a doctor?”

“I’m fine. You’re wearing my shirt.”

“Yes I am. You said I could. Now, listen- “

“Suits you. Should dress like that more often”

Francis looked down at his own bare legs before continuing:

“Henry, you’re really worrying me now, focus. I know the doctors’ number off the top of my head, I can-”

“Why, Francis? Why all this- this-” he asked, wrinkling his nose and eventually giving up trying to find the word, making a sweeping sort of gesture with his hand instead. Francis thought of _Maurice_ : ‘why this thusness?’. Henry had asked the same thing a few weeks ago:

“Francis,” he had said with a certain exasperated finality, cutting calmly across Francis’s nervous wittering about a doctor’s appointment he had coming up; “I don’t know what happened to you that makes you insist upon this morbid obsession with your body’s doings, but I’m quite sure you’d be happier if you gave it up.” Francis had turned to him for a few seconds, before looking away. He didn’t know what Henry saw in him in that moment, but whatever it was he looked away, embarrassed, and didn’t press the question any further.

The Henry that was currently on the floor was evidently anticipating an answer, eyes wide and expectant. Francis opened his mouth to answer, and then shut it again. Henry wasn’t in to fit state to understand, and he was in no fit state to explain- two boys in a hospital room; a room full of ‘ _if only_ ’s. The white lights on a white, white boy, the touch of a nurse on the arm. A lifelong armour of gaucherie worn brassily over a persistent rawness. The kitchen with its shadows and vivid red blood wasn’t the place for such a thing, and he cursed how Henry could still be so incisive even when barely conscious and bleeding profusely from the head. Regretfully taking him at his word, he ushered him back to bed after mopping at the thankfully shallow wound with some tissue. When they got there, he made Henry at least take off his blazer and belt and undo the top button and cuffs of his shirt before getting back into bed. The part of him that was still clinging onto his romantic heroine status hoped, idiotically, that Henry would ask him to stay; but he seemed enveloped by darkness the second he lay down. Francis lingered pathetically in the doorway until the rise and fall of Henry’s chest eased, and then turned off all the lights in the house and went to bed, head self-consciously resting on his shirt-sleeved arm, breathing in the musty scent and staring at a minute ink blot on the cuff as it seemed to wobble and transform in the darkness- _bird, leaf, dog, bone, bird, leaf, dog, bone­_ \- until he fell asleep.

He woke from a murky dream in which Henry had been trying to shave Francis’s legs while he desperately tried to convince him to stop. Every time Henry had accidentally cut his leg with the razor, he had insisted on shaving off a patch of his own, dark hair from his head. The hair, light and dark, mingled grotesquely on the floor and seemed to be spelling something out, something which he was just about to grasp when he awoke.

The house was silent, apart from the muffled murmur of conversation from the couple in the downstairs apartment. Francis, who had resolved to find some trousers to wear to bed for the next night, pulled on his pair from yesterday and started for the kitchen to assess the situation and figure out his next move. He found some bread and made a slice of toast, knowing Henry probably wouldn’t be able to eat. Listening at his door he heard few sounds of life, and headed back to the living room to do some Greek work- Julian had set a particularly devilish passage from the third book of Plato’s Republic to translate and an essay to write on it. Francis sighed and set to it, after locating Henry’s battered lexicon and well-thumbed text. Henry’s name was scrawled on the inside cover in what looked to be the handwriting of a child. Francis shook his head in disbelief and began to work.

He was around halfway through the translation when he heard stirring from Henry’s room. He went to check on him, and found him glassy eyed with his left leg kicking mechanically, tangled in the corner of the sheet, which had come loose again. Francis put it right, patted the offending leg, and refilled Henry’s glass with water and plenty of ice. He had no idea whether Henry had taken his pills or not; opting to err on the side of caution and leave them rather than risk an overdose. He crouched to look in Henry’s staring eyes, but there was no recognition in them. Francis found a rag to wet and place on the creased forehead, and dropped a kiss to the top of Henry’s head before leaving, shutting the door behind him. Only when he left did what he had done strike him, and he had to sit on the floor and breathe deeply for a few moments, feeling he would never forgive himself. After getting over this fit of self-berating, he refilled the ice tray and searched the bathroom until he found some toothbrushes still in their packaging, knowing Henry tended to buy household items in bulk once a year. If he brushed his teeth a little too hard causing him to spit blood, then it was nothing but deserved, he felt, raking his hand through his hair in lieu of a brush. He looked dishevelled and messy, all stray hairs and huge shirt hanging off his narrow shoulders, exposing his sharp collar-bones and freckled chest. His pale, skinny appearance had always got him called ‘Franny’ at school, and he did up a few more buttons as he thought about those days. Sticking at first to his bedroom with his shy roommate, and later sticking to his shy roommate wherever he happened to be, the both of them preferring quiet corners of the grounds and buildings. And if they grew to prefer them for a different reason, out of the necessity of hiding the secrets of the ways they had learned to fill up each other’s spaces and silences, what of it? _All’s fair in love and war_ , the saying went, but he always knew the silent extra clause of the agreement was something along the lines of: _and as long as your classmates don’t catch you at it._ Scrutinising himself in the mirror, he was reminded of all the ways he had learned to keep the secrets of his own body. To this day he tended to keep his top button done up around his grandfather, even when he had nothing to hide.

He worked solidly for an hour, maybe two hours, cursing his choice of language as he occasionally shook his aching hand, thinking of all his fellow Hampden students happily typing their work, thirty, forty words per minute while he was stuck painstakingly handwriting his Greek. He was finally wrapping up his essay, drawing together all the last few threads of his argument to what he hoped was a satisfactory conclusion, when his concentration was shattered by a dull, monotonous sobbing, and a muffled thumping in the other room. Francis, moving immediately to the door, opened it and watched on as Henry, eyes streaming, thumped his head rhythmically against the headboard as his chest heaved. His legs kicked occasionally in pent-up frustration and the duvet was heaped on the floor. His hands were balling and unballing into fists as he pulled in occasional long, shaky breaths in-between near hyperventilation. His eyes faltered vaguely in the direction of the door where Francis stood paralysed for a moment in an agony of pity.

“Francis…” he whispered hoarsely, looking at his silhouetted form like a sinner at a saint, like a condemned man at his executioner.

It was all the prompting Francis needed. He crossed the room quickly and sat on the side of the bed, taking the aching head in his hands firmly and stroking the wild hair with one hand, rubbing the top of his head with the other and preventing him from banging it on the bed anymore. Henry didn’t bother (and was probably not capable of even trying) to pretend that it eased the pain at all. He threw himself onto his side and buried his face in Francis’s leg, sobs renewed with a vigour that made them sweep like waves, catching in his throat like retches or like the cries of a dreamer who tries to scream but cannot. Francis, smoothing the sweaty hair at the pale temples, winced in sympathy as a fit of coughs caused his head to jerk violently, provoking a new surge of shaking. He buried his hands in Henry’s hair and massaged the crown of the head. Henry dug his fingers into Francis’s thigh for a moment, and then loosened them. Francis instinctively took the clammy hand in his own and squeezed it gently. Henry, barely aware of what he was doing squeezed back, hard. Every few seconds his hand would contract, squeezing Francis’s fingers hotly.

“Poor boy,” murmured Francis soothingly, running his thumb on the veiny back of the tortured hand. Henry, turning his head to the side, took a long gasp of air before pressing his head back into Francis’s lap.

“The pills, Henry- did you take them? Where are they?” he asked softly, turning the head gently to look into the unfocused eyes. A minute shake of the head followed by a wince. Francis smiled a thin smile, and gently put Henry’s head back onto the pillow after flipping it in hopes of giving him a cooler side to lay on.

“I’ll be back, darling boy,” he said, knowing his word choice mattered very little at this point.

He filled a glass with fresh ice water, and located Henry’s pills on his bedside table upon his return. Supporting the neck and heavy head as you would a child, he looked down into Henry’s eyes.

“Henry, you need to breathe now. Breathe calm. Breathe with me.”

Henry’s eyes went a little wild. Another minute shake of the head, a dart of the eyes off to the left. The breathing spread up.

“ _Henry._ Breathe.” He held his face with both hands, made Henry look back at him. After a minute or Henry’s breath slowed a little, and Francis moved one hand to rest on his chest, feeling the breaths smooth a little. He smiled. Propping his head on his lap again, he held up a pill in a silent question. An almost imperceptible nod answered. Francis ran a thumb over Henry’s dry, cracked lips and watched them open in response. He slipped two pills past them, and then poured in a mouthful of water too, holding up the head with his left arm. Henry swallowed, eyes darting from Francis’s face to the cup. Francis gave him another sip, then another. By the time Henry had finished the cup and had sucked on an ice cube until it was completely gone, his breathing had slowed further. Francis gently wiped a few drips from his chin and neck, feeling Henry quiver deep in his back. His fist was still working away, tangling his fingers in the sheets, but Francis had done what he could. He stroked Henry’s head for a few more minutes, and then placed it on the pillow and left, picking up and folding the discarded duvet on his way out, putting it at the foot of the bed. The door closed with a _snick_ like a tutting tongue, and Francis sat down again in a daze. Sitting in the light of day after the closeness of the shut off room dazzled him a little, and he took a few deep breaths. Shaking his head, he rubbed the place where Henry’s head had been, thinking of the wet, dark eyelashes flickering as he looked up at him, of the sweetly red nose. He recalled, rather absurdly, the painting of Achilles clutching a pale, dead Patroclus that he had seen in one book or another. The white, prone form of the dead man was very like Henry had been, only he had looked cold and Henry was hot; burning in fact. Jolting out of his inactivity, Francis found a hand towel to wet and went to place it over Henry’s brow, finding the previous rag on the floor on the left side of the bed, drying in a little heap. He washed it by hand in the kitchen sink and hung it out to dry properly in the bathroom. He returned to his seat, took several steadying breaths, and turned towards the essay he had abandoned before, but only after aiming a wild kick at the leg of the chair. He ran a hand through his hair, rubbed his eyes, looked over at Henry’s closed door, and finally picked up his pen again, trying to pretend that he had never put it down. Determined not to think about what had happened, he wrote for two hours longer than he needed to. After a while, he wrote, again and again, _Ηενρι, Ηενρι, Ηενρι: Henry, Henry, Henry._ With another shake of his head, he crossed it out so firmly that he blunted his pen nib.

When Henry called his name again later that night, it seemed only too natural to gather the head into his lap again, whisper reassurances in the shell of the ear- and if Henry nuzzled his mouth into Francis’s jaw for a few moments, he read nothing into it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once again, all comments are practically begged for


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> perhaps the burn isnt quite as slow as i originally planned. in which i take creative liberties with Henry's headaches and Francis's past.

Loving Henry was a complicated process, and Francis wasn’t entirely sure how he had stumbled into it. Henry was handsome, but only so much as a cliff face is beautiful. His intellect, too, was something to admire but not to hold close to one’s self. Most people regarded Henry as they might a ruined castle or long-abandoned fortress: detached and mildly impressed, perhaps not entirely bothering to hide their boredom or impatience. He was not something to be competed with, and everyone who met him knew this; even Julian, who had intuitively settled into a platonic brotherhood with him, like two monks whose beds happen to be next to each other’s.

When Francis, like Livingstone trying to find the source of the Nile, examined the last year or so to try to find the root of the way he felt for Henry, it was not immediately clear. A few instances would present themselves to him as he thumbed through the evidence: hearing Richard recounting how Henry had saved his life, how he gave up his bed for him and instead slept in the fold out bed that Francis was inhabiting for the moment. How sometimes, if they were walking silently around campus together, Henry would squint at whoever was walking next to him and proceed to tell them about whatever he had dreamed about last night, which tended to be curiously vivid. Henry in the clear winter sun in the Lyceum, smiling irresistibly as he read with comfortable ease from his text of choice; deep voice rumbling like a train through the _Parmenides_ , perhaps, or Sophocles’ _Philoctetes_ , a particular favourite of his. How, occasionally, he would suddenly look up from his reading and out of the window to watch a robin or a starling as it settled outside on one of the birdfeeders he had set up, like a roman priest in his auguracalum. One of Richard’s favourite anecdotes; Henry’s utter bewilderment upon hearing about the moon landing. His large hands flexing on the collar of Charles’s ill-fated greyhound, his shirt sleeves rolled up as he later dug the grave for that same dog, unable to conceal a sardonic little smile that slipped past the serious front he was putting up for the twins’ sake as Camilla gave a eulogy- his muttered joke to Francis and Richard as he walked past them back towards the house- ‘ _cave canem’_. Francis wasn’t sure what the sum of all these parts were, but whatever it was he knew that despite his firmest resolutions, he was drawn to Henry like the moon to the Earth, as though Henry’s steely features were magnetic. Most described him as cold, but he made Francis feel like melting.

Francis passed a part of the morning with musings like this, interspersed with heroic attempts to read some Nietzsche extract that he had once heard Julian reference. He had not understood it at the time and he did not particularly understand it now. At nine he took Henry a cup of water, watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed his pills. He looked blearily up at Francis, before asking for his glasses. When Francis gave them to him, he put them on, looked up at Francis for a moment, then took them off, put them on the bedside table, rolled over and shut his eyes. Francis took it as a cue to leave.

He walked around the apartment, dusting a few things. He had hoped to find something to keep him occupied, but Henry wasn’t particularly one for mess. He settled on doing some laundry, two lots, changing back into the night shirt while it ran, fiddling with the cuff as he waited. While everything was in the dryer he showered, noting that Henry only seemed to use hotel soap bars. Putting on his clothes warm from the dryer, he felt much refreshed. Taking a cottony shirt from the pile of clean clothes, he knocked on Henry’s door and entered. He was sitting up slightly but otherwise didn’t seem very lucid. Francis shook his shoulder lightly, making him look at him and blink slowly. Holding up the cup of water, he helped him take a few sips. He tried to say Francis’s same, cleared his throat, failed again. Francis gave him a few more sips.

“So,” said Francis, feeling idiotically like a nurse in a war movie, “I thought you might like to change shirts.”

Henry looked perilously close to rolling his eyes, but evidently decided to play ball for some inscrutable reason. With a sigh he began to unbutton his shirt, slowly. He couldn’t hide how his hands shook a little and how he kept having to feel his way to each button, squinting ineffectually down at his chest. Francis helped him peel it off, and, despite Henry’s silent protest, wiped his torso down with a wet cloth and towelled him down. The pale skin of his chest grazed pink before flushing furiously red as Henry batted his hands aside the second he felt he was dry enough. Francis would never have persisted if he wasn’t sure there was something in Henry’s eyes that made them dart at the cloth a few times more than they should have, and if he hadn’t known that Henry could easily have made him stop if he wanted to. And when Francis went on to clean his back, Henry didn’t protest at all beyond clenching his shoulder muscles a little at the cold drips. Though he would deny it later, Francis was almost sure he gave a little shiver and sigh when Francis ran his hands across the tense shoulder blades before helping him into the new shirt. Henry left it unbuttoned and brushed Francis’s hand away when he went to do it for him, sighing deep in his throat, laying back and closing his eyes. Francis gathered the towels and used shirt as quietly as he could.

Henry’s voice, creaky and dry, startled Francis a little as he turned to leave:

“I hope you don’t plan to do my trousers too.”

When Francis, open-mouthed and blushing, spun to face him, he saw that he was smiling, closed eyes crinkling at the corners like caterpillar silk. Francis smiled too, and left with steps that were a little too light and quick to be called subtle. He had a strong suspicion that Henry was watching him through his eyelashes as he closed the door, and the smile on the shadowed face didn’t fade.

Francis sat looking out of the window for a while. A charm of rosefinches dipped gaily by, stopping for a moment in a holly bush before moving on. They visited thrice more within the hour, one sitting on the windowsill and looking directly at Francis with its little black eyes. Francis impulsively blew it a kiss, and it flew away, startled. With that, he went to make a sandwich.

The rest of the morning passed quietly with Francis dipping in and out of Henry’s collection of books, most of them incomprehensible, many in alphabets Francis didn’t recognise. He had picked up a green jumper of Henry’s out of the wash he had done, and the warmth and smell were making him gently sleepy. Draped in copious green wool, he tucked his legs under the sweater too and rested his chin on his knees with a yawn. He watched the sun shift on the floor for a while, and gradually fell asleep.

He woke to Henry calling his name, to his groggy surprise. Naps had never agreed with Francis (though he strongly suspected that there were few people who they did agree with, besides Richard, who seemed capable of falling asleep at any time except the night), and he stumbled to Henry’s room feeling sticky and confused, rubbing his eyes with the jumper sleeve. Henry had his eyes closed when he entered.

“Francis. I’m infernally bored.”

“You’re awake?”

“And still in pain- keep your voice down. I sometimes have these patches, where I feel much more awake. Last time I just stared at the ceiling for hours on end, knowing that to call Bunny in would nigh-on kill me.”

“Right,” said Francis, still confused and sleep-ridden.

“You sound tired.”

“And _you_ ,” said Francis, beginning to get a bit more of a grip on reality, “must be hungry.”

“I will not deny it,” said Henry.

“A moment, _sir,_ ” said Francis in his best Jeeves impression, leaving and heading to the freezer to find the ice cream he had spotted, suspecting Henry had bought it for a purpose. When he presented it to the now open-eyed Henry with a spoon, he smiled crookedly.

“How did you guess?” he laughed. Francis laughed along, shrugging. He rubbed his eyes again.

“You _look_ tired, too. Do sit down.” Henry said, patting the bed next to him. Francis assented, reclining next to Henry, blinking slowly. Taking the as-yet-untouched ice cream pint off Henry's goosebumps chest, he got a generous spoonful and looked at the man next to him, who looked thoroughly unimpressed.

“Francis, no,” he said flatly.

“Henry…” he teased gently, smiling.

“ _Francis.”_

 _“Henry”_ he goaded.

“I’m fully aware that we know each other’s names, thank you,” he said, but softened visually, though with a slight roll of his bloodshot eyes.

“Go on then, if you must.” He looked acutely embarrassed; or something like that, anyway.

Francis, shifting closer to Henry, began to spoon feed him. Henry’s face was stubbly from his almost two days in bed, and it softened the hard lines of his jaw. His Adam’s apple swam gauzily behind his taut skin with each swallow. Francis, hardly thinking, placed a finger on it and felt it surge against it. Henry opened his mouth as though to speak, looked Francis in the eyes. For a mad rushing moment Francis vividly saw himself leaning down and stealing a chocolatey kiss, but instead he blinked stupidly; once, twice. He snatched his hand away, hearing himself ask in a gauchely conversational tone:

“How do you suppose they know the cows are happy?”

“What _?”_ asked Henry, after a confused pause.

“The- cows- “said Francis, knowing full well how stupid he sounded. He pointed at the packaging on the ice cream carton, with its brash promise:

“it says it’s made from milk with happy cows.”

Henry was giving him a look he had never seen before. His eyes were glinting a little, his brow was soft.

“Francis, I’ve always wondered where you learned to fill silences”

“I’ve had my fair share of unpleasant silences and they taught me well enough,” he said shortly. He thought about plugging Henry’s mouth with ice cream to end the conversation, but thought better of it.

“I see. Are you going to elaborate on that?”

“No.”

It felt like another life, like a jigsaw piece that didn’t fit the one that he was in now. With a sigh, he yielded the ice cream to Henry and lay back down beside him. Henry looked at him and said, huskily,

“there are some silences that you don’t have to fill, you know.”

“There are some which you can’t,” he responded shortly, turning to lay on his side to meet his gaze. Henry looked back, unknowably, for a few seconds, before shutting his eyes and laying on his back, but not moving away from Francis. Francis felt the heat radiating off him, stared at a scar on the side of his exposed chest, presumably a remnant of his childhood crash. He thought, desperately, _it’s happening. I’m melting._ He was dazed and dizzy and still felt a little sick from waking up so suddenly. He buried his buzzing head in his arms. When he looked up again, Henry was looking up at him.

“Francis, you _do_ look tired. Put the ice cream back and lay with me a while. It’s setting in again and I won’t be good conversation but I know from experience that this bed is comfier than any of the others round here. Besides, you must be cold if you’re wearing my jumper.”

“It looked soft,” he said weakly.

“It is. Green suits you,” Henry said, as though he were offering the translation for a word rather than making Francis’s blood rush pathetically.

He walked on shaky legs to put the ice cream tub back and wash up the spoon. He saw himself in the reflection of the kitchen window, red and gangly. He paused, taking a few deep breaths before re-entering the room. He flopped onto the bed, trying to be casual and not to betray that this was all he wanted, all he had hoped for. When he lay down, Henry, unspeaking and without opening his pain-lined eyes, shifted a little closer, sought out Francis’s hand and squeezed it. Their legs touched when he put them under the blanket, and Henry didn’t flinch away, instead pressing still closer until their faces were perhaps five inches apart. That was where Francis fell asleep to Henry’s breathing tickling the tip of his nose gently. When he woke up to find them in the same position, hours later, the only thought he could form was: _I’m gone. I’m gone. I’m gone._

He woke again, perhaps an hour later, from an intensely vivid dream that he was being kissed, and opened his eyes to find that Henry was watching him intently. Embarrassed, he reached up to wipe the drool from his mouth. He blushed, thinking how unattractive he must look.

“That’s odd,” he tried to laugh, “I never dribble in my sleep.”

Henry looked deep into his eyes, and said, inscrutable as ever:

“You really are frightfully unobservant, Francis.”

With that, he kissed him again.

Francis fled.

Laying on his back on the fold out bed, he stared at the white ceiling, taking several deep breaths and viciously wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He felt ridiculous. He _was_ ridiculous; this was the problem. Even while in bed with him, Henry hadn’t been able to stop commenting on his ingrained faults, his mindless chatter. Henry, serious, insightful Henry, had done what he could, but he could never give enough. It wasn’t his fault. He had been offered everything he wanted and he couldn’t risk taking it. He resolved to leave. He unresolved. He re-resolved. He felt like a fish on the deck of a ship, flipping gracelessly around.

Henry was silent for a few hours, presumably consumed by his headache again. Francis felt jet-lagged and lost, like his stomach was only just catching up on the last few days. He thought about the others- Tuesday was a Greek class day and they must have wondered where the two were. _All of this because of a box of chocolates,_ he thought exasperatedly. Just to have something to do with his fluttering hands, who had apparently decided they were tired of being hands and were trialling being birds, he did another load of laundry. When he had set the cycle off, he poked around in the fridge and cupboards and decided on a baked potato. He hadn’t eaten one since his last week at boarding school, the boy sitting next to him stealing forkfuls. Francis had slapped his hand away, laughing and telling him that he would get fat if he always insisted on eating one and a half meals, pressing their legs together under the table. The next time Francis had seen him, his ribs had showed. By the end of the summer, he was dead. Francis had shared almost every meal he’d had with him in the gap in between, until both of their appetites failed towards the end.

 _Comfort food my ass,_ thought Francis as the potato began to seem less and less appetising. Nevertheless, he was well practised in the art of forcing food down when he didn’t want it, and he did so. He washed up his plate, drank a cup of water, steeled himself, and went and helped a barely conscious Henry down with his medicine. In a fit of ruthlessness, and also general distaste at the idea of Henry festering in the same clothes for another day, he helped him into pyjama trousers chastely. He hoped viciously that he would be confused by the change when he woke up. Tired of being quiet, he went into the garden, belted an old Piaf tune. His voice shook badly; he saw one of the downstairs neighbours look at him behind a swish of the curtain. Breathing hard, he went back up to the apartment, both fists clenched, knuckles showing white through his skin like crescent moons. He narrowly resisted the temptation to clatter some pots and pans around, and sat down to proofread his Greek work. He found ten errors on the first page. Evidently, he thought bitterly, he was thinking more clearly now.

He hardly knew why he had done it, if he was being honest with himself. He felt like he had reached for something and been scalded. He felt like he had been taken out of the oven too soon, and was now collapsing stickily. He felt like the bird on the feeder must have when he blew it a kiss. In his heart of hearts, he knew he couldn’t blame it on the chocolate box. He had run towards this, and then been shocked when he reached it. In disgust at himself, he took off the green jumper, draping it on the back of Henry’s chair. He had let him down; taken advantage of his vulnerability and then bolted when he got what he wanted, like a reverse Pygmalion- like an idiot, to be more precise and less pretentious. He knew there was a simple answer somewhere, under the armour, in the soft parts of himself, the quiet parts of himself. And yet, he didn’t want to look in those places, and the only person who might have been able to take off the armour was passed out in new pyjama trousers in the next room. Francis, with nothing better to do, began to eat some of the ice cream.

“Francis, are you going to stop being absurd or do I have to stagger out there and do something to my head again?” came Henry’s voice, deep and raspy. Francis found he didn’t know the answer, but started for the door anyway, bringing the ice cream with him. The allegedly happy cows leered up at him from their grisly technicolour field.

“Yes, Henry? What do you need?”

“Don’t play nurse with me Francis. I’ve met plenty of those in my life, and they wouldn’t let me embarrass myself like I did last night, and they certainly wouldn’t let me get away without brushing my teeth as long as you have. Speaking of -“ he said, raising an eyebrow. Francis nodded and went to get Henry’s toothbrush and paste, and a cup. He watched him brush his teeth for almost exactly two minutes: Francis counted, fully expecting the result. Softening a little, he held out the ice cream with a questioning look on his face. Henry nodded. Francis sat on the edge of his bed, perching awkwardly. They took it in turns taking spoonfuls. Francis looked at Henry’s eyes, shadowed with tiredness, then looked away when he realised Henry was looking back.

“Francis, you’re absurd.”

“As you already said.”

“And I was right.”

“That appears to be the problem.”

“My being right?”

“My being absurd.”

“I’m giving this to you, Francis. I thought you wanted it, and I don’t think I misinterpreted the signs.”

“But do you want it, Henry?”

“Francis, I’ve already mocked your powers of observation once today, don’t make me do it again.”

“Fuck you, Henry.”

“Alright, alright. Stop perching there and sit next to me. Ah- new pyjama bottoms. Good,” he said, pulling back the duvet for Francis to sit next to him.

Hating himself for giving in so easily, he sat down next to Henry, perhaps a little closer than his better judgement allowed. He was less hot today. The headache seemed to be blowing over gradually, though the slight squint to Henry’s eyes and the set of his shoulders showed that it wasn’t entirely gone yet. He hated himself, too, for feeling a tiny pang of regret on that front. He would miss this Henry: stubble and thickened midwestern accent and sleep-softened hair. And yet- he was being given an opportunity to see it again, and again, and again. And he was refusing. Henry saw it in his eyes immediately.

“What do I have to do to convince you this could be good?”

Francis didn’t feel like storytelling. He didn’t feel like saying _I don’t know. Please find out and tell me._ He didn’t feel like saying _go back in time, teach me how to recognise the symptoms of a silently dying body. Go back in time and tell me how to put myself back together so I’m a functioning whole rather than a piece of hurt wrapped in a piece that can’t hurt._ He didn’t feel like saying _make me love you less; give this less potential to hurt._ He didn’t feel like saying any of these things, so he gave a gasping sob and buried his face in Henry’s warm chest as he cried, crumpling up into a version of himself that just wanted to be held. Henry wrapped an arm round his shoulders and pulled him closer, kissing the top of his head in silence. Francis, after a few minutes, looked up at him, shifting to look him in the eye. Despising himself for all the self-indulgent, pointless hesitating he had done that day, he let out one little hitching inbreath and surged in to kiss him, wet from tears and still wracked occasionally by the post-crying hiccups. After a few searing moments, Henry pulled away and smiled at him, slightly feline.

“There now, that wasn’t so bad was it? What’s life without a little risk?”

Francis said nothing, leaned in again.

When they woke up in the morning, the ice cream was completely melted. They laughed when they found it, and drank it in turns, feeling like the gods tasting ambrosia for the first time, before pressing close and falling back asleep.


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm fully aware that i use italics a ridiculous amount but i cant stop myself

Francis floated around the kitchen for a while, while Henry lay in bed. Laughter, it had turned out, was not the best medicine, and Henry had woken with a gasp, looking at him with eyes unseeing and gritting out an apology while breathing hard through his nose. Francis, who had watched his brow furrow and felt his feet kick distractedly as he slept, had readied his medicine and coaxed it into his mouth when he opened his eyes slowly, looking at Francis, confused and hurting. Gathering him into his arms, he shushed Henry’s muttering, holding him against him until he dropped off. Francis noted that it had not become easier or harder to see Henry in pain, but he knew from experience that it was something that he would probably never get good at. And yet, he found himself at peace with that fact. He had been right to be scared: love was a risk. Love was letting a person be precious to you knowing full well that one day they could be snatched away. Love was putting all your bets on a fragile, delicate body and hoping for the best. Love could well be a losing dog. But it didn’t feel like that. It felt like a win. He smiled.

He had a good feeling about today. The sun was low and achingly clear, giving the world an optimistic, scrubbed down gleam. It was the kind of light that prophesied frankness, beauty. Francis helped Henry brush his teeth before brushing his own, preening a little in the mirror. Before the headache had come crashing back down on him, Henry had been talking about Homeric epithets, had assigned Francis _fair cheeked. Fair cheeked Hera. Fair cheeked Aphrodite. Fair cheeked Helen. Fair cheeked Francis._ He had rambled about St. Francis, patron saint of animals, Italy and stowaways. ‘And you?’ Francis had whispered, ‘what would you be patron saint of?’. ‘I believe, having checked the book once, that one St. Henry is patron of Benedictine Oblates, and the other the Catholic cathedral of Helsinki. But if I were somehow a saint, and I had to choose, I always thought I would be patron saint of students. Thought that way I would get a lot of prayers.’

Francis went to the spare room and tidied it up, light with the knowledge that he wouldn’t be needing it anymore. He stripped the bedclothes, putting them in the laundry basket, and put the blanket he had found away in its space in a cupboard. He left the room to air, watching the curtains flutter from his seat in the living room where he continued to proofread his essay. At lunch he had a fried egg on toast and wheedled Henry into eating half an apple. Watching the television on mute while he ate, he perused his limited options, Henry being the type of person to only have free-view channels. Francis strongly suspected that it was the first time it had been turned on for months, and drew a heart in the dust on the screen. He ended up entranced by the grotesque pantomime of Sesame Street when silent, all gaping mouths, crazed, rolling eyes and quivering limbs. He remembered watching that same show as a child during cold Bostonian Christmas vacations, remembered getting it faintly confused with Somerset Street in the city centre. After cleaning his plate, he went to sit with Henry for a while in the dark.

“Ah, Francis,” he said, panting slightly, “I think it’s a last hurrah and then it’ll be over. Then again, it could just be a dummy summit. Have you ever climbed Mount Cataract? I have, with Bunny. He whinged the whole way up, then stamped in the snow at the top and complained the whole way down that his shoes were wet.”

The mention of it brought an interesting thought to light.

“What was it like when you found Richard that Winter?”

“What was it like? Did I tell you there was a hole in the ceiling of his bedroom?”

Francis shuddered. He hated the cold.

“How did he survive it?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. Between you and me, I was more concerned than I let on later to you all. The doctors told me he was close to death when I found him, just running on an empty tank, and no one at the school who saw him every single day even noticed him wasting away into food for snowbanks. I saw it the second he came up the stairs, poor boy. I never told him, but I got a speeding ticket while driving him to hospital. I suspect he’d be mortified if he knew, and it was abundantly clear that he wouldn’t be able to pay it off.”

Francis nodded gravely, knowing Henry couldn’t see him.

Henry growled in frustration at his persistently painful head, rolled onto his front and pushed his face into the pillow. Francis patted his back gently and left. On his way out Henry had mumbled an apology for ‘spoiling the day' and Francis had laughed and told him not to be stupid. He closed the door behind him with a smile.

Francis looked out the front window onto Water Street. He hadn’t left the house for coming up to four days now, except for his brief stint in the garden. A car crawled down the street, humming sleepily; a red Ford with a lurid flower power sticker in the back window reminding Francis of his mother, who had decided to become a hippie when he was a little boy. She had stuck at it for around a month before giving it up when she was told that she couldn’t go to Woodstock by his grandparents. Francis remembered wrapping himself in a soft floral dress of hers while she was away at college, wondering if she was thinking about him. He had had a shirt made of the same material that she had bought him so that they might match, making all the photos of them together that summer look like they were of a pair of siblings with their identical red hair. Henry’s roses were carefully bound up in hay and sacks in the front garden. There had been speculation among the Greek class how Henry found time to keep the garden so spotless, but nevertheless he certainly managed. He had a good hand for delicate little patient jobs like that, for the planning, the waiting, the watching things come into fruition. His skills could be turned to dark or to a capacity for great tenderness; the way that on their birthdays members of the Greek class would find, left anonymously and neatly wrapped on their desks or perhaps their doorsteps, something which they had mentioned a desire for, or lingered over in a magazine or shop, months ago. When they opened it, Henry would be impassive but unable to help a little upward twitch of the corner of his mouth. Last Christmas he had got Francis an ornate second-hand oven dish after he had complained in the summer that his current one didn’t hold the heat well enough to stop his souffles falling. Every souffle Francis had made in the new one had been perfect, and he smiled every time he saw the pre-war flowery designs on the sides.

The moon was still out by noon, finding little rival in the pale, buttery sun. The day remained like an unbroken glass, chugging placidly along as Francis busied himself finishing his Greek work and Edward II. He found some Sappho in the original Greek, finding Henry had scribbled notes in the margin in his cluttered handwriting. Francis had always felt an affinity with Sappho, with her lovelorn pathetic ways, her longing for the past and terror of the future. Reading one of the fragments in particular, he smiled: _‘I don’t know what to do- I’m torn in two’._ A younger Francis would have been quite unmanned by this- torn loose into a self-pitying spiral; indeed, he had spent many a bitter evening reading Sappho and suchlike (he had thought, in his silly young way, that the line _‘mais vrai, j’ai trop pleuré! Les aubes sont navrantes’_ must have been written for him and only him). And yet, this new Francis, the Francis of today, being happily in one piece rather than two, rolled his eyes fondly and moved on; folding down the corner on the pages of a few particularly soppy ones for Henry to find later.

Feeling quite confident that life would be the same when he returned, he went on a walk, leaving a scribbled note to say that he would be back soon. North Hampden was quiet, it being the middle of a weekday, and he smiled politely at the few people he encountered, keeping his head down against the cold breeze that ruffled the early daffodils. The world seemed good-natured and contented; resolved. His fingers and ears ached in the chill and he knew the tip of his nose would be cherry red when he got home to Henry. _Home to Henry!_ Finding himself alone on the street he turned a quick pirouette, grinning widely as his greatcoat fanned around him. A blackbird was piping in a hedgerow and fluttered away, frightened. The sky was cottony and bright. The houses were friendly and familial, lined in their neat rows like pews. He turned for home.

The evening went docilely by, like an ox being led by the nose. He had a tin of soup for dinner, slipping back into Henry’s green jumper and the shirt he had been sleeping in. When he lay down next to Henry after they had both brushed their teeth, he rolled over with a grunt and silently took Francis into his arms. He fell asleep with a smile on his face, melting against Henry’s broad chest. He dreamed of Henry cutting a bouquet of daffodils, which bled pinkly when he sliced the stems.

When he woke up, the bed was empty. Instantly concerned, he listened out, dreading silence far more than noise. He heard clattering in the kitchen and got out of bed to investigate, not bothering with trousers yet. Padding out in his sock feet, he arrived silently in the kitchen.

Henry was making French toast, hair wet from the shower and neatly combed. He was fully dressed, neat in a tweed suit and pale blue tie, and his shoulders were relaxed as he hummed something, perhaps by Wagner. Francis practically ran to where he stood, throwing his arms round his neck and draping his body against him. Henry turned immediately and pulled Francis in for a gentle kiss by the waist, looking down at him with clear blue eyes. Bringing his big hands up to hold Francis’s face, he took a long look at him before turning back to flip the toast in the pan. Francis noted happily that he had not yet shaved.

“Nice to see you in the daylight again,” he said.

“I might say the same to you, _Mister Winter,_ ” said Francis in an elaborately coy southern accent. Henry snorted lightly.

“Go and put on some trousers. I won’t have you parading around here like some hussy near all these windows. God knows how much the neighbours have seen of you without me to provide you with basic common sense.” Francis laughed lightly and gave Henry a mock-sultry look as he retreated to the bedroom to dress.

“You’ll have all the boys in the neighbourhood knocking on my door and clamouring about cream white thighs if you’re not careful!” Henry called after him.

“You’re the one who called me fair cheeked!”

When he was finished, Henry was humming again, and took Francis in his arms to dance for a few moments before pulling out his chair so that he might sit at the table. Along with the French toast, there were two cups of jasmine tea. Clinking their glasses together, Francis thought it felt like some kind of vow, or ritual. He swallowed the hot floral tea, locking eyes with Henry as it slid down his throat. They both smiled.

As they washed up, he turned to Francis earnestly.

“I suppose you’ll be wanting to go home soon?”

“Yes, I suppose I will.” He felt very calm. He had loved staying here, but he was missing cable television, his trashy novels and the slightly more pretentious cooking which he tended to favour. This week had been a little oasis, but he didn’t mind slipping back into ordinary life. Something had clicked into place between he and Henry, and he was sure that for the moment it was sticking fast.

When Francis emerged from the shower to redress, he found Henry smirking at his literature selections from the last few days.

“You’re nothing if not predictable, Francis.”

Francis laughed and pinched his arm with no conviction at all. Henry, cornering him against the back of chair, kissed the water droplets off the nape of his neck. Francis squirmed round to face him, kissed the tip of his nose, and went to dress.

“Now now Mr Winters, you don’t want to be seen to be harbouring a hussy.”

Henry let out a little laugh and settled down into a chair, still a little weak from the days of suffering. When Francis got back he found him reading his essay, and immediately took it off him to plop into his lap, ignoring the fact that his limbs were far too long. Henry stroked his hair out of the way to look at him.

“Francis, I did enjoy having you here- “

“I know Henry. Don’t worry. You’re going to be seeing a lot of me.”

Henry smiled gratefully.

“If I could- I would love to- “

Francis laughed to see Henry lost for words and raised an eyebrow expectantly.

“That is, I _would_ like to see you- ?” Francis irreverently thought that this wouldn’t do very well on a Valentines card, even while saying:

“Yes. Yes, I’d like to see you too, Henry.”

Henry smiled up at him brightly, crows’ feet softening the dark brow. _‘Julian is wrong. Beauty isn’t terror. Beauty is gentle,’_ thought Francis as he pressed his forehead against Henry’s. The world was terribly sweet.

Henry evicted him from his lap and they spent a peaceable hour bickering friendlily over Francis’s essay, and then over Henry’s. They discussed the relative merits of English and Latin and French, of gendered adjectives and noun cases, with Henry getting surprisingly passionate about differentiated pronouns. They agreed that Marlowe was criminally underrated and Shakespeare criminally the opposite, and they talked for almost three quarters of an hour about modernised translations of Classics ( _‘but I don’t_ want _to hear Oedipus calling his mother a bodacious chick!’_ Henry had expostulated). When Henry sat quietly Francis felt perfectly happy to leave the silence be, or to fill it; he didn’t feel the need to second-guess everything before he said it. He felt worthy of Henry, finally, and it made all the difference in the world. And when Henry looked up from a book to see him looking at him, his eyes smiled gently back at him.

They went for a walk, hand in hand in the quiet residential streets, casting long thin shadows which straggled along behind them as they walked West towards the twins’ place to explain their absence. He saw their eyes dart, together, at their joined hands, but they said nothing. Camilla, when Henry wasn’t looking, dropped Francis a wink which he returned with a laugh. ‘ _I knew it!’_ she mouthed. They walked back through a park, the path hemmed with snowdrops and the promising beginnings of crocuses and narcissi. It was that time of year when the world seemed to be waiting for the starting pistol, teetering on the edge of spring. One or two birds were losing their winter plumage, the rest clung stubbornly to it. The sun stuck around until eight, when the light turned golden for a window of twenty minutes or so and made the empty apartment walls run with honey and sharp cut shadows, before it disappeared suddenly behind the horizon, leaving the flat blue and soft.

Francis and Henry stood, bathing in the rich light, watching the night creep in. Henry quoted some more Sappho, something about the full moon rising and women gathering, presumably for some Aphrodisian ritual. With that thought, Francis brewed some more jasmine tea.

When he handed Henry his cup, his hair caught the light as he turned to take it, filling it with gold, haloing his face as the gilded light poured around his shadowed features. Francis took in a hitched inbreath, then another: Henry’s tongue darted out to lick his lips before he whispered a Cummings line- _‘touch me, before we perish’_ , his voice husky and hollowed out like a cathedral. A beat of silence as they stared at each other, eyes swallowed by their pupils. Francis, feeling like a drowning man looking up at the surface, swiftly put down his tea as Henry did the same, just straightening up as Francis slammed into him, kissing him for every time he had wanted to over the last few days. Henry was wrong about his saintliness, and his dominion. In this moment he looked immortal, divine, a hero. God of the little things. Protector of the quiet moments. The patron saint of lost boys.


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> epilogue :) thank u for reading this far

** Epilogue **

Francis was sitting in what was now irrevocably _his_ chair in Henry’s flat, _forever and ever, amen._ He had moved in, in the end, several months after leaving on that mild February afternoon. Summer was beginning to draw to a close now, but the world was still warm and wholesome and the evenings were balmy and gentle, with Francis and Henry enjoying each new pleasure like wild blue eggshells picked by chance from the forest floor. Life was quiet, scholastic, and companionable.

Henry’s flat had changed in little, immeasurable ways. There was nothing one might be able to put a finger on- just that the edges had softened slightly, the rooms were a little more inviting and friendly, the kitchen cupboards fuller and the fridge shelves less monochrome. Henry now knew the names of his downstairs neighbours, and spoke to them occasionally when they passed him in the garden. He had, begrudgingly, bought cable television. There were a few more cushions on his chairs, and there was proper shampoo in the shower. He owned more than six mugs and three towels now. The rooms had red curtains which gave the house a rosy glow. Henry’s bedroom had a proper lightshade now, and he found it gave him less headaches than using lamps like he used to. Their collection of books had more than doubled, and Henry had accrued a few movies, much to his own surprise. Once, they were convinced they saw a very young Julian in the background of a Hitchcock movie. The only rooms that hadn’t changed were the superfluous spare rooms, which generally sat in darkness.

Henry often complained, jokingly, that having Francis around was like living with an oversized ginger cat. He needed constant feeding and attention and had a propensity for lap-sitting. Francis had once tried to argue back that Henry was far more catlike; aloof and formal, but Henry had simultaneously shut him up and crushed the theory by leaning down and kissing him until he forgot what he was talking about. Henry had pulled away after a minute, perhaps, and had, smirking, regarded Francis, with his dazed blush and lips pinked by the kiss.

“I think you’ll find you like living with me, don’t you Francis?”

Francis, pulling Henry back in, was helpless to disagree.

“So, Henry, what’s it like living with Francis?” asked Camilla over her tea.

“Well,” said Henry gravely, “As you can see, he’s filled my apartment with all this clutter. And he has appalling taste in television. And he keeps spoiling all my tie knots by pulling me down to his miniscule height with them. Worst roommate I’ve ever had, really.” Francis smiled, softly, and Camilla laughed. Henry, being six foot four, teased Francis (six foot almost to the dot) endlessly about his height. Richard, sitting next to Camilla, smiled, coughed, shifted in his seat.

“I’m sure it’s not so bad,” said Camilla.

“No, I suppose it’s not,” he replied.

“I have to say,” she said, with a wry look at Francis, “I never saw it coming.” Francis battled a smile. She had witnessed every agonizing stage of his crush, from worship to trembling obsession, and had poked fun at him incessantly when they were alone.

“I have a way of being very quiet, and _Franny_ here has a way of filling silences. It just so happens to work very well.” Francis blushed, and Richard let out a surprised laugh. Henry covered his creeping smile by sipping his coffee.

Francis and Camilla, finding themselves alone, decided to make a cake. Henry was rather restless, and Richard was a notorious people-pleaser and had jumped to his feet when Henry asked him to accompany him on a walk. Camilla was no better at inactivity than Henry, and had tapped her foot pointedly until Francis had suggested they bake something, upon which she had smiled gratefully.

“A few months ago I would have laughed if you had told me that Henry’s apartment would have cake flour and cooking chocolate in the cupboards. You _have_ rubbed off on him, you know.”

Francis added the vanilla and bumped her shoulder with his own.

“I mean it!” she said, “I really think you’ve saved each other more than either of you can know.”

Francis considered it. He thought about how much softer Henry looked these days, no longer sharp and twitchy, thought about how his own heart felt less bruised and more capable every day. He nodded slowly.

“Yes. Yes, maybe we have.”

He thought for a second.

“Although, he’d probably kill me if he knew I’d told you, but he has a particular taste for chocolate ice cream which is not as clandestine as he thinks.” Camilla smiled conspiratorially, miming zipping her lips shut.

The cake was on the table when Henry and Richard returned half an hour later. Henry, grinning widely, took a thick slice and kissed Francis on the cheek, saying ‘ah, cake, just the ticket- oh, chocolate!”. Camilla stifled a laugh as Richard looked confusedly at her, until she kicked him covertly in the shin (an art that she, as a twin, was well versed in, and that he, as an only child, was very shocked by). Henry, oblivious, patted the arm of his chair for Francis to sit on so that they could share the cake, taking it in turns to take mouthfuls. Watching Henry talk enthusiastically to Camilla and Richard, Francis smiled to see his full-bellied laugh and easy grin, the comfortable way he lounged in his chair while stroking the small of Francis’s back absent-mindedly.

Later, when the guests were gone, they sat in bed together, listening to the birds in the garden sing. Francis was not an augur, but he felt comfortably sure they were singing out good omens on that auspicious day. As the shadows drew in, they lay in the master bed and discussed a beautiful future full of clear days and gleaming evenings. When they slept, they dreamed in bright colours of times to come, and the worlds they saw smelled of jasmine.

_‘When the lithe moonlight silently_

_Leaped like a satyr to the grass,_

_Filling the night with nakedness,_

_All silently I loved my love_

_In gardens of white ivory.’_

-E.E. Cummings

**A/N** : I spent hours of my life on this fic, days in fact. I stayed up late on school nights several days in a row to write it. I gave myself a repetitive strain injury from typing for such long periods. I went down long research holes on my own 4g to make it accurate, and uploaded it off my own data. I constantly cross-referenced tsh to make it as canon correct as possible. _**If you have read this entire fic and liked it, the least you can do in return for reading my hours of writing labour for free is write a few words in the comments and leave kudos :)** __as of now 130 people have read this, but only 5 left kudos and 1 commented_. I'm not trying to be demanding or rude or act entitled, I just feel ppl should treat fanfic writers w a little more reciprocity, esp more prolific and committed ones than me. cheers <3333

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u for reading! I hope you can now see how Francis's 'weakness' of kindness and silliness could have saved Henry and how Henry's strength of will and character could have saved Francis, and also how the skills that Henry turns to darkness could also be turned to great tenderness and love and good. Thank u for coming to my TED talk. Comments lovingly accepted.

**Author's Note:**

> weird research holes this led me down:  
> -boston street map  
> -freeview american tv channels in the 80s and what shows were on there  
> -is franny old enough to have watched sesame street as a child and witnessed woodstock and the hippie mvmt  
> -augury and ornithomancy  
> -jasmine meaning  
> -saints  
> -birdlife of northeastern us  
> -bostonian and missouri accents  
> -period chinaware  
> -do they say sitting room in the us? do they say specs in the us? etc etc etc


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